Advance Your Career With Distance Education

Picture this: there’s an exciting new role at your workplace, and you think you’re perfect for the job. You work hard to land the position, only to find out the guy in the next cubicle has bagged it. When you dig deeper, you realize the one thing that separates you two is the additional degree he has. And that’s when you start to regret thinking you were too busy to go back to school to get that advanced degree, which could have put you on the road to corporate success.

Doesn’t paint a pretty picture, does it? But the good news is that it doesn’t have to stay that way. You can easily set your house in order by getting an advanced degree through distance education.

Advancing careers with distance education and other non-traditional means has become quite commonplace these days, and there are many factors that contribute to the growing popularity of these programs. Distance education makes sense for full-time professionals, because it allows them to study without taking time off work. Because of the flexible nature of distance education, most people are able to strike a balance between their jobs and schoolwork.

Plus, there is a growing acceptance and integration of distance learning programs into the mainstream education system, because of the drastic improvements in the quality of the course structure as well as content of these programs. Distance learning programs have undergone a massive overhaul thanks to the technological revolution. High-quality e-books and CD-ROMs that can be accessed at the click of the mouse have replaced poorly-printed study material sent to students by postal mail, plus online collaboration, chats, email, and more have made it easy to communicate with instructors and fellow students.

What to Look For

If you think you’ve had it with doing the same job year after year, distance education might be your ticket to new opportunities. But before you take the plunge into this unique pool of knowledge, there are some things you should consider.

Needless to say, accreditation is at the top of the list of things to check for before throwing yourself into a distance learning institution. Not only is accreditation proof of the quality of an institution’s education, it is also a good indicator of how your degree will be received in the business world.

Another very important factor when selecting a distance education program is its relevance to your goals. It’s important that you understand why you’re pursuing this degree. Is it to move ahead in your current job, or to acquire a completely new set of skills for a fresh start? Look for a program that has the breadth of courses and programs you need.

You also need to keep an eye on your budget. Any type of college degree-whether it’s distance learning or a classroom-based degree-is not going to be easy on your pocket. You may have to dip into your savings or take out a student loan. But if you select a university that participates in Title IV Federal Aid programs and/or offers its own in-house grants and scholarships, you will have more options for financing your education if you qualify.

How Does It Work?

That distance education doesn’t require you to sit in a classroom is a well-known fact. What’s probably not common knowledge is that even within distance education, there are different course formats offering varying degrees of flexibility.

Synchronous distance education, for example, needs all students to connect to their computers at the same time for pre-scheduled lectures, seminars, video conferencing, etc. The idea is to get everyone together, even if they’re not under the same roof, for an interactive session on a regular basis.

Asynchronous distance learning programs provide unparalleled flexibility, as students are generally free to complete their coursework anytime they like. However, students in asynchronous distance programs may also be required to listen in on recorded lectures, participate in webinars, etc.

Both types of programs make liberal use of the Internet through emails, live chats, online discussion forums, and more. In fact, distance learning students may even be asked to submit their assignments and take exams online.

Is It Right For You?

Distance education provides a uniquely flexible opportunity for professionals to earn the advanced college education they thought could not fit into their busy work and life schedules. Before you choose a program, make sure you think about your goals, research your opportunities, and select the program that fits your needs.

Easy Home Based Business Ideas – 3 Surefire Ways To Earn Some Extra Dough

The recession has many struggling no matter which part of the globe they may reside. With things getting tougher and no respite in sight many people are turning to home based businesses as part-time employment to generate some extra cash. Many easy home based business ideas can be found on the internet. A simple search will land one at over a thousand such opportunities. However, if you are like me you may be wondering just how reliable these opportunities are and how lucrative they can really be. Here are 3 home based business ideas that are surefire ways to earn some extra dough.

1. Writing For Online Marketing Professionals: Writing is one of the easiest ways to begin earning an income online from the confines of your own home. All you need to begin is a desire and ability to write, along with a computer that is connected to the internet. There is no shortage of writing opportunities out there. It is all a matter of choosing what kind of writing you would like to take up. Start with the simplest writing work – Article Writing. If you chose to do Article writing you will be writing about topics of the client’s choice. These topics could be anything under the sun. Researching the topics is very simple. Google is a great tool that can be used to get information about a certain topic. After obtaining the needed information you will rewrite it in a captivating and informative way to entice readers to visit the web site the client will include in the article before posting it to a directory. The topic will include a keyword given to you by the client and this keyword or phrase will need to be used three to four times in the body of the article. It’s as easy as that.

2. Virtual Assistant: Virtual assistants are also in high demand right now and this opportunity is among the best of the easy home based business ideas that are sure to help you begin earning a handsome living from home. Many online businesses need virtual assistants to do many tasks for them on a daily basis. These include replying to emails, posting articles to directories, being online to chat with potential or existing clients and even making online marketing calls and sending marketing mailers to people.

3. Online Tutoring: Many students from developing countries hire online tutors who can help them with their assignments and research work. Teaching spoken English is one such online tutoring job that is becoming very popular. If you feel you excel at a subject it will prove very lucrative for you to offer your services to online portals. You may be asked to prepare text, questions and write papers for scholars. Some educational publication houses are constantly on the search for good editors for their educational books. Editing books, writing them and tutoring students with their course material is a great home based business that can soon turn out to be a full-time job.

How to Find Your Top Home Based Business

People that become successful with their home business literally become their own boss and they make money in their sleep. This is great but there is one problem. The problem is that many people do not know how to go about finding their top home based business and becoming successful with it.In order to find a top home based business you need to know what you like. For instance if you like cats you could create a website about cats, build your audience by providing updated content, and monetize that traffic with your mailing list or thorough resources like Google AdSense or Chikita. If you have a product to sell you could always promote that product with various online marketing techniques and get massive people to buy that product. Also, you do not need to have a product or service of your own, for the easiest way to start a top home based business is though affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when you join a program that provides training, products, or services to people. Through this affiliate program you can get people to a pay for a product or service from that affiliate program and you will receive commissions.Another tip to finding your top home based business is by avoiding affiliate programs that you may feel uneasy about. That affiliate program may give all these promises on how they are the best and how you will make money instantly or get paid only by signing others up. If you encounter a website like this then chances are your gut feeling is right. It is best to do research on that website, search for reviews about it, and search for it on FTC’s website for this can save you time, money, and a fat pain in the neck.An advantage to searching for a top home based business is to find one that relates to something you have a passion for, either it’s through selling your own products from your website or promoting someone else you need to have a drive for what you are doing. Many people are just driven on making money and when they get no results within 6 months or so they give up. But if they had passion they would have found ways to promote their products or services as something of value to people rather just another advertised product or service.To find your top home based business you need to find a profitable niche. For instance you might like to design necklaces and you want to sell them on your website. Well you need to reach your target audience. You can attract your target audience through commonly searched keywords or funneling traffic through form sites related to necklaces.

Successful Home Based Business – 3 Can’t Miss Trends

As we approach a new year there are several trends that continue to be important for every successful home based business owner. Here are three that you should be following if you want to make more money with your own business next year.1. Use the Internet. It really does not matter what business model you are using. The Internet is where people are shopping more than ever before and you need an online presence to get your share of the market.Whether you own a franchise, a direct sales company, a network marketing business, or something else, using the Internet is smart for your business.2. Promote affiliate products. Any home business owner can increase their profit if they add affiliate products to their business.You may have a specific business opportunity that you promote, but if you’re smart you would have your own website and monetize it with affiliate products. Even adding Google AdSense to your website is a good way to make more money.3. Outsource for time management. Nobody can do it all and there are many opportunities to outsource things for your business.Examples of things you can outsource include web design, blog building, blog writing, article marketing, hiring a virtual assistant, and so on. If you are smart you will concentrate on things that you enjoy within your own business and then outsource those that you do not enjoy.These are 3 can’t miss trends in the marketplace today. Having a successful home based business means using the Internet, promoting affiliate products, and outsourcing tasks whenever possible.

Choosing a Legitimate Home Based Business to Generate a Full-Time Income

In reality discovering a legitimate home based business opportunity is a bit like searching for a needle in a field of haystacks and not knowing which haystack hides the needle. Ok, maybe it’s not quite that bad. There are a ton of trash and useless content to go through and numerous work at home scams that can add confusion to an already difficult decision. An actual legitimate home based business requires hard work and commitment, as with any other career where you want to advance. Estimates that U.S. Web retail sales will proceed to spring up by a sturdy compound yearly rate of growth of 17% and sales will pass $144 billion by 2010. Of course, the legitimate home based businesses will just represent a portion of that amount, but the solid growth trend is for sure relevant.When it comes to starting out in the online business world, one of the most important things you can do is to select something that interests you and one of the worst things you can possibly do is to pick a business opportunity based on how much money the ad or sales page says you can make. Just because one person made so much money with this method certainly doesn’t mean you will.Avoiding Home Based Business Scams Is Easy If You Know What To Look ForFirst of all, you’ve all heard the phrase if it is too good to be true then it probably is. When it comes to starting  a legitimate home based business you will need to be on your toes and not in a hurry to buy the first thing you come across that promises thousands of dollars monthly or more. The fact is that making money online is not an easy task, especially for beginners. So, you will see tons of different offers online promising you the gold at the end of the rainbow and everything else in between. They might claim that it’s an auto-pilot system in which you just set it up and forget it, sit back and laugh all the way to the bank. Let’s be real for a moment and understand that there are a lot of people out there trying to sell get rich quick schemes. You’ve seen them before as we all have.It is no secret that it frequently costs some money to start a business, but no one knows the easy solution that works for everybody. Avoiding home business scams can be done by doing a little research prior to purchasing. Check the internet forums and look for any reviews or comments on a product or company before you think about buying a home business product. Always check for a money back guarantee as any legitimate company will offer one.Legitimate Home Based Business Resources You Can TrustThere are several websites that are all about legitimate home based businesses and they will surely be helpful with your decision. Some sites you should visit before taking the plunge include: entrepreneur.com and homebusinessresourcedirectory.com. These two websites will give you a good head start and an idea on what you should look for when considering to start a business.

Start An Ebook Business – Four Reasons Why This Is The Best Home-Based Business Model

If you are ready to start your own home-based business but still not sure which opportunity to go for, let me tell you right now that the best way to achieve real success with a home-based business is to start a real business, not jump into the next big opportunity that you see online. A real business will yield the best income returns and it will also last the test of time, helping you to build a sustainable source of income that will last for years and years to come.With this said, one of the most lucrative home-based businesses you can start is that of selling information products. Information products can be ebooks, audio courses, video courses, or anything that helps you teach your customer something that they are eagerly looking to learn. If you have any sort of expertise, even something you may think is not a marketable skill, you can probably make money by packaging your knowledge into various forms of digital products.If you really do want to make money from home, you have to build a real business based on your own products, and here are four fantastic reasons why starting an information product business will help you build financial freedom and even help you achieve a six-figure income within a year if you are willing to work hard and follow some simple directions from someone who has been there and done that:Reason #1 – Ease of product creationIt is so incredibly easy to package some of your knowledge into a short ebook, into an audio and video product, and into information courses that command several hundreds of dollars on autopilot. Imagine writing an eBook that was worth $37, an audio product that was worth $97, a video course that commanded $497, and a 1-on-1 consulting course that sold for $4997; sounds pretty good doesn’t it? Well guess what, there a several hundreds of successful online entrepreneurs who are quietly doing just this, pulling in insane amounts of money based solely on their information products that were created once, packaged nicely, and sold on autopilot for years and years following the initial work.Reason #2 – Ease of running your business after creating the productsWhen you decide to build a business based on your own information products, you basically have to build the products one time, set up a sales page for them, and they will do the rest of the work for you 24/7, year-round, whether you are there or not. This is truly the way to leverage your time and earn substantially more money than you would if you were paid by the hour.Reason #3 – Your return on investment is hugeHere’s the thing, when you create an information product, it takes up no space in your home, so there is no cost of storing products, there is no need to spend money on shipping because everything is sent digitally over the internet. So once you build and sell the product, whatever the cost is on the sales page is the cost you will see in your bank account, because there are no costs whatsoever in selling and then shipping your product. The only costs of running an information product business are the ones paid to your web hosting and your autoresponder, which are still very small in comparison to your profits.Reason #4 – The cost of running a home-based information product business is a fraction of what you can earnIn a year, no matter how much you earn, your costs to run the business are the same, which are only a couple hundred dollars. Compare this to the cost of running an offline brick-and-mortar business where the costs of rent would be thousands per month alone, so you can see how much you save by running a home-based business. You will likely keep almost 99% of everything you make since the costs of running your home-based business will be so incredibly low.

3 Reasons To Start A Home Based Business

Owning your own home based business has many advantages, and can help boost your income, who doesn’t like that idea. What’s one of the most common answers when you ask someone what they wish they had more of?Money!Don’t we all. In fact in today’s tough times, we all need more money, but how do we get it and how much more do we need. While everyone’s answer will differ, the end result is still the same, we need more. whether it is just to make ends meet, or to have a better and more fulfilling lifestyle.So what are some of the reasons why people start a home based business:
More money.
Work your own hours. Ideal for stay home mums, who can work during school hours and be home for the kids.
You can work it part-time around your current job.
To meet people and make new friends.All good reasons, but let me share with you what I looked for when starting a home based business.
Personal growth
Lifestyle choices
Compensation plan.When looking to start a home based business it is very important to look beyond the basics. If you are serious about it and are going to put time and effort into it, make it count.You already work hard, long hours, possibly shift work, weekends etc. A home based business makes good sense, but what you need to do is think about how to work smarter, not harder. Look for a business opportunity that offers a personal growth and development plan attached, it will teach you how to think outside the square, and make you feel good about yourself and your abilities.Having a home based business will still require time and effort. You will have to put in the hours if you want to succeed and reap the rewards. Persistence is the key to success, like the old saying goes, winners never quit and quitters never win. If you have the passion to make a difference it will open the door to a lifestyle choice you never thought possible.Integrity, support, ongoing training and earning a residual income are all huge drawcards when starting a home based business opportunity. You benefit from your own efforts, and it’s a good feeling. And then you take it a step further and help others along the way, that’s a great feeling. To accomplish all this from a home business it requires a solid compensation plan.There is an abundance of home based business opportunities available, depending on what you are looking for, many that you could start part-time and then make it you main source of income, if you are prepared to work at it.

Queries About Property Management

The decision of allowing a third party to manage your property is not always a simple decision to make. It can be quite difficult if you are a first time investor. However there are certain benefits that come with hiring the services of a property management company. Managing your property personally can make your entire life very miserable. But hiring someone to do it for you leaves you with a lot of free time and you can use the free time to close more deals. Before hiring any property company, you should ask yourself a few things and they include the following;

Cost of the services. The cost charged will vary from one state to another. Some of the management Fort Worth companies will charge as low as 4% of the gross rent while others will charge as much as 12 %. Hence you should understand the cost before hiring a property management company. If the cost is not ideal for you and your property, then drop that company and look for another.

Properties by the company. You should ensure that the company manages rental apartments that are like jut the ones you have. You can do a thorough research on the type of properties they have managed and this will help you know the credibility of the company. If you are not sure of the management company, Google it and check out their profile. After all if you are to entrust someone with your property, then you might want to know more about that person or that company.

Method of fee collection. You should know when the fees are to be collected. This will allow you to prepare on time. You should also ask the property management Fort Worth managers whether the fees will be deducted directly from your bank account or not. Some of the companies collect their fees quarterly while others collect annually. Hence you should be aware of the fee collection methods.

Advertising methods. Advertising methods used by the property managers should be effective. Therefore you should go for the property management company that has effective advertising methods. This will make your property to attract the best buyers.

General efficiency. The property management should be efficient in all ways. When a client vacates the premises, it should take a very short time for the apartment to be cleaned and rented out again.

Hiring the services of a management Fort Worth company will help you increase your overall profits. This can be as a result of reduced cost of managing the property. When you hire the services of the property management Fort Worth companies, you will have a lot of free time and you can use this free time to close more deals that will get you more property. You can even relocate to another country and let the property management experts run all the errands for you. If you are incurring a lot of costs while managing your property, then you might want to consider hiring the services of a property management.

Investing Wisdom From Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital

Investing Wisdom from Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital

My regular listeners probably heard one of my earlier segments where I spoke about Howard Marks, the 67-year old billionaire who co-founded investment management firm Oaktree Capital which now manages about $84 billion in assets and is a publicly-traded company with ticker symbol OAK.

Oaktree focuses its investments on high-yield bonds, distressed debt and private equity, and has delivered a whopping 23% average annual return over the past 25 years… so Marks has rightly earned his fame and fortune. To give you an idea of just how much a 23% rate of return is: If you invested $10,000 25 years ago, it would be worth $1,769,000 today.

And, like Buffett, Marks too sends out folksy memos to Oaktree clients where he outlines his views on investing, the markets and the economy that are insightful, direct and sharply written. And today, I’m going to share a few insights from Marks’ latest memo – morphing his thoughts so they apply to individual financial planning. I’ve decided to break this up into a two-part series – with the first half of Marks’ memo today, and the rest to follow next week.

Key Questions to Ask First

So in this latest memo, Marks first addresses philosophical questions on what to consider in setting up your investment portfolio. Once you have a clear idea on what your investment goals are, based on your retirement needs, Marks says you should discuss the following questions with your advisor:

- Is it possible to build a retirement portfolio that can beat the market? If yes, then how, and to what extent can we beat the market?

- What’s the best way to manage risk?

- How do we define success, and what risks are we willing to take to achieve investment success?

Then, as you build your portfolio, you’d want to balance it out between index investments (where you should not expect market-beating returns), individual stocks such as dividend payers, and perhaps some alternative investments to a smaller extent. If you’re closer to retirement, you might also want the safety of inflation-protected bonds. And for the safety of bonds, index investments and dividend stocks, you should be willing to accept “average” performance. But for the alternative investment portion of your portfolio, you should expect above-average or superior returns, as Marks calls it.

Pick Funds that Dare to be Different

For your alternative investments where you’re seeking superior returns, look for funds that are backed by a strong track record, and where fund managers dare to be different. You see, if you pick a mutual fund that’s run by a manager who is essentially following or mimicking what others are doing, you’ll just end up paying high fees without getting any real bang for your buck.

So for this alternative portion of your portfolio, look for managers that are courageous enough to be different and open to being wrong… managers who assemble a portfolio that is different from those held by most other funds. As Marks puts it, to be a top performer, the fund manager has to “escape the crowd” by being active in unusual market niches, buying things others haven’t found, don’t like or consider too risky to touch. A good alternative fund manager avoids what the market considers to be a darling, or all the rage, and engages in contrarian cycle timing, and concentrates heavily in a small number of things that he thinks will deliver exceptional performance… everything that personifies great investors such as Howard Marks and Warren Buffett.

As Marks puts it “the cautious seldom err or write great poetry” in referring to fund managers that follow the herd.

So look for fund managers who dare to be different, have a consistent history of market-beating performance and are transparent with their investors. That said, you also need to recalibrate your expectations with such alternative funds because their investments often could take longer to bear fruit… so only invest a small portion of your funds that you’re not planning on touching till you reach retirement… because if you picked the right alternative investment fund, those superior returns could compound very nicely over time.

Now I know that it’s near impossible for most individual investors to really evaluate alternative investment funds, so this is where a good, qualified advisor can offer advice and help kick some of your returns into high gear.

And as I mentioned above, Marks’ company – Oaktree Capital – is publicly traded with ticker symbol OAK, so you can buy shares to participate in Oaktree’s success; When you invest shares in OAK, you are not buying into Marks’ portfolio, but rather participating the company’s profit from its portion of the investment it takes for itself and the fees that are generated from his clients. Oaktree shares also offer a pretty compelling 7.7% dividend yield at current levels… but this is not a recommendation so please do your own research should you consider buying Oaktree.

Most great investments begin in discomfort.

Most people feel good about making investments where the underlying premise is widely accepted, where recent performance has been positive and where the outlook is rosy – but such investments are high in demand and are unlikely to be available at bargain prices.

Bargains are usually found among things that are controversial, that people are pessimistic about, and that have been performing badly of late – investments that generate discomfort for most people. And this is where good alternative funds excel. For example, Oaktree Capital focuses on distressed debt – bonds issued by companies that are on the ropes in some way or another, bonds that are priced at pennies-to-the-dollar… bonds that comfort-seeking investors would not even think about. This discomfort is what causes distressed debt to be priced cheaper than it is really worth, and it’s one sector that has helped fuel Oaktree’s outsize returns. This area of investing is practically impossible for the typical investor to get into and one has to have superior skills in order to avoid being burned badly if things don’t work out.

Marks also says; Dare to Be Wrong

Marks also reminds us that with courageous, discomfort-generating investments, you must also be prepared for failure as an inescapable potential consequence of trying to do really well. In other words, be prepared to lose money on this alternative portion of your portfolio… it’s not something anyone wants, but get into alternative investments with the understanding that non-mainstream investments could be harder to liquidate and have greater risk, and while your fingers are crossed for the upside, be aware that you could also lose money. That said, a good alternative investment fund should protect you significantly on the downside too.

So look for alternative funds that invest judiciously, have more successes than failures, and make more on their successes than lose on their failures.

Alas… No Magic Formula

Marks also cautions us that there is no easy formula to produce superior risk-adjusted returns – because if there were, everyone with a positive IQ would be rich.

Or, as good ol’ Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet’s Partner bluntly puts it, “Investing is not supposed to be easy. Anyone who finds it easy is stupid” and does not understand investing’s complex and competitive nature. Hardly the words of someone who wants to be politically correct, but he makes a good point. Why should successful investing be so easy that the uneducated and lazy investor achieves superior rate of return? It just doesn’t happen that way.

Superior investment results can only come from a better-than-average ability to figure out when risk-taking will lead to gain and when it will end in loss. And this is not easy task. So it’s good to look for fund managers that ideally have a strong background in economics, financial math, accounting and investment analysis.

How To Succeed At Online Product Creation The Easy Way

Product creation could be a frightening subject for a lot of Internet marketers to face. Some folks who get in the game with the intention of making a full time income are completely ignorant as to how an online business operates. One of the most profitable ways to create online cash is by creating a product that others are happy to pay for.

Product creation is legitimate method of generating money through internet marketing but many entrepreneurs get it wrong. They start by imitating their Internet marketing gurus by creating information products on Internet marketing in hopes of getting rich the way their heroes did. The problem is that they usually don’t know what they are doing and enter a highly competitive niche with very little marketing experience or connections.

Here are a few tips for effective product creation that may help you get on the right track:
Start by finding a profitable niche with low to moderate competition. If you conduct some rudimentary market research and keyword research, you’ll find many opportunities in areas that will surprise you. Amazon and eBay are two great places to brainstorm for product ideas.

Developing Your Product does not have to be a difficult project. You can find experts in the right field for your niche and pay them to write the material while an artist designs the packaging and website or blog. You can outsource the entire product creation part of the project after you conduct the research and testing to ensure profitability.

Sales and marketing strategies should be created while developing the product and learning about the market. Some experienced marketers use pay per click to drive traffic to their offer page; some folks outsource the entire marketing campaign to affiliates through ClickBank or other affiliate programs.

Product creation does not need to be hard, particularly when the merchandise is electronic. E-books, videos, audio and multi-media products sell very well. They are distributed immediately to customers electronically. Once you have a good feel for a niche market, try to service your customers with associated products and upgrades. If you want to earn money online through product creation, you must understand supply and demand. The majority of new online marketers fail miserably because they go after highly competitive markets or forget to research their chosen niche properly. You have to create your products according to the needs, wants and desires of the prospective customers.